After four exhaustive hearings and a mountain of correspondence, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission closed a public hearing last Thursday on one of the largest proposed subdivisions in decades.
The fate of the project — a 29-lot, 54-acre subdivision on Meeting House Way in Edgartown — now lies in the hands of the 15-member commission. The project is scheduled for a post-public hearing review on Monday, July 13 and deliberation by the full commission on July 30.
Under review for the past 18 months, the Meeting House Place project has received at least three full revisions since it first came before the commission in late 2018, with each iteration receiving substantial public backlash despite a slew of changes to layout, affordable housing contributions, maximum house size, energy usage, nitrogen and sewer plan.
After a commission subcommittee voted last fall to recommend denying the project, developers went back to the drawing board and submitted a new plan.
“This is a very complex project. One of the most challenging we’ve seen,” said commission chairman Doug Sederholm Thursday. “Regardless of how this comes out, I want us to be proud of this process we’ve gone through.”
Utah-based developers Douglas K. Anderson and Richard G. Matthews bought the property in 2017 for $6.6 million, subsequently submitting the subdivision plan to the town. They have been represented by Edgartown attorney Sean Murphy and builder Douglas Hoehn at commission hearings.
The most recent version of the project, presented in four consecutive Zoom meetings between April and July, includes a 28-lot subdivision with a maximum home size of 3,800 square feet and around 20 acres of protected natural heritage land. On the 29th lot, developers plan to build 14 price-restricted condominiums to be sold with preference for year-round or elderly residents. The condos would be priced in the $400,000 range, according to the applicants.
The developers are offering more than $1 million in affordable housing contributions through a variety of incentives. Traffic congestion, conservation, nitrogen impacts, energy use and a rare imperial moth habitat have all been all sticking points.
Neighbors, Island residents, scientists and conservationists have spoken out repeatedly against the development, both in public testimony at hearings and in letters to the commission.
The project has backers too, including the chairman of the Edgartown planning board chairman, who wrote a letter of support, and neighbors who favor the offer by developers to tie about half a dozen residences into the town wastewater treatment plant as a way to mitigate nitrogen runoff.
In total, the commission has heard some four hours of testimony on the project and received 46 letters, most of them against the project.
On Thursday, Mr. Murphy was given an opportunity to make a closing statement to the commission on behalf of the applicant. He said the recent version of the plan had come a long way toward providing net-positive energy contribution, and that it would the “most sustainable developments ever approved on Martha’s Vineyard,” and that a smaller subdivision would force the Island to lose out on many of the project’s benefits.
“I think this plan provides greater protection for the ponds, it provides far more public benefits through the affordable housing and the town homes than just five houses being built out there,” Mr. Murphy said. “We feel we have done everything the commission has asked of us. We ask that you give us a positive vote.”
The commission land use planning subcommittee meets July 13 to begin the post-public hearing review.
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